Well, I died. So close! =(

I had never played torchlight. but i preordered TL2, and started playing my free copy of TL1.

Made an Alchemist, ****, normal difficulty. Cruised thru til the final boss. had a few close calls but didn't die up til then..

I had really bad poison resist so those enemies toward the very end that shoot the 5 poison blobs at you almost killed me a few times, but I learned to be cautious.

So I think I was like level 32 ish. Had tons of points in ember strike, some in pyre. Offensive spell Mastery, etc. typical caster class. plus some points into beam golem, and a few defensive spells.

Got the final boss down to 4/5 of his health, but then died. So I didn't even come close to killing him. Just seems sooo slow grinding him down. Had to run around collecting potions, etc. half the time, resummon my pets all the time. Ember strike did 0 damage to him basically. ended up just using pyre, and meleeing him with a REALLY nice staff I found. gold color staff, 600+ DPS.

About to roll a Vanquisher next. Prolly not gonna try that final boss til like level 35 next time.

So am i bad at video games or should i have gotten way higher level before killing the boss?

Comments

Reasonable record and level for Normal. Normal is generally considered, even by the devs, to be the "gamers" training difficulty, with Easy being the place for no-gaming-history folks.

On Very Hard, Destroyers can take Ordrak and minions at about levels 32-36, with some reports of a few experienced "heroes" who have done it as low as ~28.
VH Vanqs and Alchs probably should not expect to finish the campaign below level ~37, and many experienced players recommend that only very experienced players attempt to enter the Black Palace with a Vanq or Alch below 40. Exception: Heavily Summoner VH Alchs can probably deal with the Black Palace and Ordrak at ~35, if you are willing to master/ put up with the massive minion management.

^^ oh, well that explains it. I just went in too early.
I actually considered leveling up more, but felt that I was starting to get diminishing returns on each level up. Like I wasn't improving THAT much. But this was probably not even true, I could have pumped more points into my beam golem, and some passives to boost my pets, etc.

Not as close as the last boss, but my VHHC character had advanced farther in the game than I ever had. Perhaps my error was pushing forward so fast because monsters were giving me glancing blows with my high defense and resistances. A champion would deal about 2/10 damage to my HP with one hit, which isn`t too bad if you`re a Vanquisher. Anyway. At level 22, I was still using needle arc, a very useful skill because it can be used in different ways. One is getting very close to a boss and spamming the skill. All 7 needles hit and you do 7x damage + criticals. I was about on 75% health when I started doing this to a troll in floor 22 or something. Guess what? The troll landed a critical. Normal attacks wouldn`t even hurt me, but a critical reduced my health to 0 in one shot.

The good thing is I didn`t use any uniques with that character and everything valuable was in shared stash or mule characters.

Hi guys...I just registered on this forum. I've played TL1 since last year, starting from easy mode. Now I'm a level 37 vanquisher in VHHC mode and thanks to cheats, I just cleared floor 18 of the Tu'tara caverns, playing without mod. This is the highest level I've achieved so far...I've died quite a lot of times in VHHC mode, and my previous best was level 30. It's kinda easy when your level is double of what your enemies are in the main quest (find and defeat Odrak)...but not so when you enter phase portals or accept Hatch's quests. There you will encounter enemies of the same level (or maybe one or two levels below you)...fighting them is like putting your life on the line and any mistake will kill you. I tried Hatch's quest to retrieve an artifact from the portal he summoned, which led me to a different section of the caverns. I almost got killed by Tu'taras like thrice...one stab and I lost like 8/10 of my hp, which caused me to abandon the quest.
I heard that Odrak is so insanely powerful it makes other level end bosses look like ants. Is this true? I have never reached the black palace yet...the highest I have been so far was floor 23 of that volcanic fortress when I played in hard mode. I died there...then after a few months I started on VHHC. I have to say that VHHC truly reflects its difficulty...I got killed several times by dark zealots with just a hit of their deadly bolts, killed by crawlers and enslaveds with two hits and Tu'taras and blood disciples with two stabs in a row. Even a blow by a troll juggernaut reduced 9/10 of my hp, and that wasn't even a crit. I've played 30 hours and stayed alive until now...but I am worried on how to face the last three bosses: Melina (don't know if it's the right spelling), Shane and of course, Odrak.
So should I wait till I exceed level 50 before facing Odrak? One more thing...how do you get a weapon with a 3k dps?? It sounds really insane...is it only possible when playing in mod? Mine's currently a volley gun with 778 dps. Hope anyone can help me out. Thanks.

Take the risks and enchant your weapon, preferably a natively fast one.

You should be able to take the Black Palace with the Vanq you have now, BUT...
you need to build up Def, so the Def will enhance your resistances;
you need gear that will build up your Fire and especially Electrical resistances - Fire around 400+, Elec 500-700+
you need to be prepared to deal with Enslaved and DZs at the same time - usually by running from the DZs til you can deal with the Enslaved. Arrow Hail or Explosive Shot at very remote locations, beyond walls, etc can help. Wind of Justice on a hot key can keep the hordes off some while you shoot the heavey hitters.

Do NOT fight Ordrak in the big room. Let him come to you in the small one. He draws power from his minion dragonkin in the nest itself.
Then keep moving around; he is devastating and quick with his claws, breath, but moves over ground pretty slowly. Leave the level if you need to, but understand that Ordrak, unlike other bosses, will recover while you are gone.

DR - im assuming u know that armor has the same randomness as damage. so 700 electric resistance means 350-700. wouldn't it be better to get 1000 health which is good for any type damage?
get only health when playing vanquisher/alchemist bcoz u aint supposed to take more than 1 hit from a group anyway. always try to kill them within 1 instance of dmg U take....
and why do u need fire resist?

I just have sort of a personal mental block about focusing on extra HP. I like the way that armor and Res are further boosted by Def, as a mechanism, and for some reason, adding HP always seemed odd to me as opposed to making the protection tougher. So now I just don't think in those terms.

(I think also that all the discussion of the Heirloom bug back in the early days of playing this game may have pushed me toward being slightly prejudiced against HP booster gear - which is ridiculous given how rarely you heirloom anything - but mental blocks are weird.)

BTW - no, I don't think I did know that armor/res was a variable. Doesn't matter that much, really, though, for this scenario - you just go for the amount that seems to assure enough to absorb the zaps at the target floor level. I can tell you from experience that ~700 elec res will allow you to survive enough red lightning shots in the Black Palace to find/kill the Zealot(s), and that's what counts.

Of course, in a Black Palace clone level at Floor 72 of the endless dungeon, it may be a different story! For that, the appropriate answer may be, "Get lots of everything!"